Miyazaki explained that the secret to the hand-animated waves in Ponyo was keeping the squiggly lines moving all the time. All images courtesy of Walt Disney Pictures. © Nibariki-GNDHDDT.

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While on his Ponyo press tour last month, Hayao Miyazaki was honored as part of the annual Marc Davis animation lecture series. Seated with an interpreter, the reserved, charming and witty Miyazaki chatted about his career with John Lasseter, his long-time friend, supporter and chief creative officer of Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios, who has been instrumental in expanding his works in the U.S. through English-language versions. They discussed Miyazaki's early beginnings as an in-betweener (he first worked on a canine version of 47 Ronin), how he trapped his way into directing, the formation of Studio Ghibli, his concern for preserving the environment and his passion for animation.

Here are some gems from their conversation:

John Lasseter: What was the path to [directing the Castle of Cagliostro feature]?

Hayao Miyazaki: It's difficult to explain. A senior colleague of mine came to my house one night and he said, "I'm supposed to make a movie of Lupin, but it's not going well and so would you help a little?" And I said, "Well, OK, I can help." And I sort of casually mentioned that I could help and I ended up directing it. When I thought about it later, it must've been a trap. And in four-and-a-half months, I completed [the movie].

JL: Four-and-a-half months!?

HM: I was really, really busy.

JL: This is around the time that we first met. Just after you finished Castle of Cagliostro, you and a number of artists from Japan came over here to Los Angeles for about a month or more to study how American animation was done. I'd love for you to talk about that trip a little.

HM: I came to L.A. to get some lectures on that and to also visit various studios and that's when I met the young John Lasseter.

JL: I remember them coming to the studio and we talked and showed them everything that we were doing. And we met with Brad Bird as well and most of the young animators that were working at the studio at the time. And today you mentioned something that I found interesting: we were expressing our frustration with at the Disney Studio at the time… and those in charge were sort of suppressing all the young people that were coming out of Calarts. And you mentioned that you were having a kind of similar experience.

HM: The people who give the money are very conservative and aren't apt to new ways of doing things. So I think you and I were both trying to get them to release their money so that we could do things that were new and interesting to us.

JL: How did Studio Ghibli get formed because that was right around [the same time]?

HM: After we made The Valley of the Wind, we established a studio along with producer Toshio Suzuki…and we could form a studio by just renting a studio at that point because the staff would gather for each production and then scatter after each production was over. Of course, later on, that didn't work so well. And while we were making My Neighbor Totoro, John Lasseter had been at the Hiroshima Film Festival and came by to see it. I think it must've been a hardship for you to go to Hiroshima in the mid-summer… it was so hot there.

JL: Really hot. But it was fun coming to visit the studio. There wasn't really anyone at the studio who could translate really well for us, but we were speaking the language of animation and really got by. I'll never forget him taking me into the background department…and the backgrounds for Totoro were so beautiful and I was just amazed by the paintings. He walked over with this kind of Miyazaki glimmer in his eye and smiled and just showed me a cel of the Catbus. "It's a bus that's a cat? Or a cat that's a bus? I can't wait to see this film?"

I remember when we were making the English-language version of Spirited Away, you had mentioned that there was a young girl -- the daughter of a friend of yours -- that was kind of representative of girls in Japan that were kind of apathetic… didn't really care about things. You mentioned that you wanted to make a movie for them.